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Early March

The first part of march didn't involve much in the way of holographic goodness.  Susan and I spent most of our free time preparing for the North Texas Irish Festival.

March 9, 2004 10pm

Bill McGarvin stopped by Andres' house to drop off the hexcel sheets Andres and I were purchasing from him.  We helped unload the box (which was very light for something that contained five sheets of aluminum hexcel) and then took Bill out to the Irish Rover for some beers and conversation.

According to my calculations I should be able to make an extremely rigid and light table with this (I'd put in the numbers but I had a hard drive crash yesterday, I'm writing this on the 14th, and much of today is going to be spent recovering that data).

March 11, 2004

Earlier in the week I purchased some aluminum and steel rods so that Andres and I could make a bunch of new mounts (base on the mounts by Colin Kaminski)

I set about trying to make the first throwaway (the first almost always is) mount.

My trusty new drill press.  I'm one of those people that balks at buying tools I won't use very often (although I'll drool over them in the store) but I wouldn't have been able to make these mounts without this press.  Thanks to my father for giving me the press this past Christmas.

After the first throwaway I set about making a good one in one go.  This took me about 30 minutes to make.  Now I just need a bench-top band saw.  Using a hacksaw to cut the 3" blocks and the clamp channels is a whole lot of no-fun.

March 13, 2004

Today Andres and I got together to make a bunch of mounts.  In four hours time I think we made six or seven mounts.  It's a lot of time for so few mounts but so far I'm very happy with their performance.

First, cut off a 3" section.

Drill the holes that will ultimately be tapped to take 1/4" by 20 screws.

Drill the 12mm holes where the rods will fit.

Tap the holes for the screws.

Cut the channel which will allow the clamping action to happen.  This part would work better if we had a way to cut a larger channel.  I've thought about finding a metal cutting blade for the table saw and may try that soon.

Cut the rod which will eventually have a mirror or lens attached to it.

Tada!  One finished mount.

March 25, 2004

This evening I took some time to cut the hexcel using a jigsaw with a metal cutoff blade.  I've now got three cut pieces that are 3.5x5' and another three that are 3.5x1.5' for a total of four layers of hexcel.  Next week I'll start assembling the table top.

Present
2003: Feb | Mar | Apr | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec
2004: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec
2005: Blog
2006: Blog
2007: Blog